An excerpt from My Journey Begins Where the Road Ends - one of my favorites. In honor of our lovely Kathryn Elizabeth on her birthday!

Katy, Katy

“Watch it,” Cromley yells over the drone of the chainsaw, “you’ll cut your nuts off.”

I’d flash him the finger, but would have to let go of the saw. Instead, I ponder the enormity of his offhand comment. I plan to keep my manhood. None of this cutting, no ceremonial slit. I’ve taken to this aura of fatherhood.

Glenda doesn’t want any more children, after this one. Three will be enough, and all by Caesarian Section. Catholic upbringing or not, she’ll have her tubes tied this go round.

A half-acre stand of scrub oak, and a few scraggly, jack pine mixed in, nothing like the hardwood forests back home in Michigan. Cromley knows the owner, and woke me early on a Saturday morning, “Let’s go. I’ve got a case of beer, and gas and oil for the chainsaw. We can get enough fireplace wood for two years. Wear your boots.”

Boots for the snakes. Water moccasins. Not much else lives in this north Florida island jungle, a lowland between the intercostal waterway and the Atlantic. A few Key deer, wild pigs, and snakes.

January, but still hot and humid, my shirt is soaked with sweat. We’ve been cutting wood all day. Cromley’s rusty Mazda pickup, pushing two-hundred-fifty thousand miles, overflows with stacked firewood. I switch off the saw, limp toward the truck, pull the last two beers from the cooler, and toss one to Cromley. His muscled arm reaches out and catches the can in midair. He stands tall and strong in these woods, with a deep, burnt-on tan. He’s the ship’s Engineering Officer, a sailor all his life, and ten years my senior, though he works for me when we’re on board the Cutter Sweetgum. Here, just friends, I call out, “Red on the head like a dick on a dog.”

Cromley’s young wife, younger than me, looks out the window, and watches while we stack his half of the wood. She’s pretty, wants me to teach her the guitar. Cromley kids, laughs his belly laugh, “Ya, I know how that goes.”

We figure we’ve sweated out the half case each, so stop off at the Anchor Bar for one last beer, before heading to my place to stack the last of the wood. By the time we leave, the sky has grown dark, and we can barely walk. Cromley drops me off without pulling into the drive, “I’ll bring the wood over in the morning.”

Glenda sits on the couch quietly. Elsa and James are already in bed, sleeping. I jump in the shower, dry off, and slump in a chair.

“I think I’m in labor. I’ve been having contractions all day.”

She has my full attention. The appointment for the C-section is a week away. I call the doctor, “Get in here, now,” she orders.

“I have to take a bath first, and wash my hair.” And she does. My nervous fidgeting begins.

I call the neighbor to sit with the other, sleeping kids, start the VW Rabbit, and lay out a pillow and blanket in the passenger seat. She dries her thick, brown-black hair. Her contractions increase. I speed the twelve miles inland toward the hospital in Jacksonville, cross the bridge over the intercostal, and look down through the darkness. Deep black water turns into a jungle of scrub oak and pine. I swerve to dodge a small armored tank, an armadillo, feeding on a dead snake.

The doctor meets the car at the emergency drive-through entrance. Attendants help her onto a stretcher, and swoop her away. I park the car and run into the hospital.

Already in surgery. I wait, sober, no longer tired and worn from a day in the woods, no longer a drunken sailor on the town. And finally I hear, “You can see them now.”

If we have a girl, we’ve decided, we’ll call her Katy, Kathryn Elizabeth.

Katy, our third and youngest, clings beautifully to her mother’s breast, and suckles.

“I know I could have had her naturally,” Glenda smiles.